Loupseule
by gudrina
Summary: Alone in his apartment he looked at the wooden box of letters under the bucket of dirty water dripping from the skylight.Between the fall of Voldemort and Sirius' return,Remus loss and strength in these descriptive short chapters and flashbacks.Enjoy!
1. Wolf Alone

SEQ CHAPTER h r 1He ran away with his hair dyed a chestnut brown. He told himself it was a chance to start over. He felt as if it was a chance to drown. In June, he rented a damp, empty apartment at the end of a crime-ridden street on the west side of the city. It had one window and one skylight, which was cracked down the center and badly patched with bits of once white plaster that had begun to turn a moldy black and flake off onto the wood floors. When it rained, droplets of reeking brown water from the rusty tiled roof trickled in through the widening crack, leaving a dark warped shape on the wood floor.

And he thought, "I will fold the burnt edges of myself away slowly, like a waxing moon."

In July he bought three gallons of black paint and covered the walls in dark reflections of his eyes, of the night sky, of silky black fur. By August, deciding he did not want to be reminded of Sirius ever again, he purchased four gallons of gray, and repainted.

For the musty apartment he bought a used mattress. A desk. An old leather chair. A bucket for the dripping skylight. 317 Preway became home.

He moved into the one-room studio without luggage. That is to say, there were no duffle bags, no suitcases, no pieces of antique furniture, or cardboard boxes of silverware and wool sweaters. In fact, he left even his razor behind, and two weeks later noticed the err when he caught his reflection in the glass of a window. Besides his newly acquired furnishings, there were two boxes situated at one end of the makeshift kitchen, the smaller sitting centered on top of the larger, and both dusty and neglected, even as the months passed.

When the sun rose, Remus lay in the empty, sagging mattress on the floor and stared at the cracked ceiling, rising occasionally to drink cold tea or eat the food he bought from the grocer around the street. His diet was simple now, mostly citrus fruits and bread. He'd given up meat; he didn't know exactly why. On some days he sat at the desk and wrote letters to James and to Peter, to Lily. His fingers hit the keys of the typewriter in sharp staccato pecks that resounded through the barren apartment with an almost agonizing emptiness. Occasionally, he wrote to Sirius. The habit was strange, each letter always ripped and hurled to the floorboards to fall into the layer of dust that had begun to form there. These were letters they would never receive; no one would ever receive. Not even Remus would dare to read them again, and they would lay forgotten in piles and crumpled heaps around the dirty flat. At night he fell back into the mattress again, continuing another perpetual and seemingly endless stretch of the same foggy days.

The first of the two boxes which had accompanied Remus to 317 Preway was unduly heavy, as the mover had noted as he wheeled it up the stairs in the windy July. Occasionally it was a mystery to even Remus as to why he had bothered to bring it along. It was a trunk of books. Old literature from his school days mostly, potions tomes and volumes on defense and transfigurations and astronomy. Others too, several novels, one or two rolled magazines he'd kept for various reasons, some long forgotten.

Transformations were done alone. After all, he was alone. It was those moments the most when he wondered if Sirius thought about him. He had a vision of what he imagined an Azkaban cell would be like, black with mold and mildew and moss, and dripping, oozing, seeping with filth over cold, hard stone. There was the vision of a hunched, emaciated Sirius, braced against a corner. At first he'd tried to keep his mind from those thoughts, he'd blocked them and pounded and squeezed them, and still they returned. There was the reoccurring word that haunted him. _Murderer_.

In September he went to the grocer at the end of his street for oranges and a stale baguette, and caught a strand of music drifting through the window of a parked car. He recognized the symphony, it was a muggle one. Sleepy, with out of tune violins and a soloist who seemed to have forgotten the notes of e minor. He plodded through most of the fall until the last of his money ran out and the electricity was shut off in his lonely apartment. It was November.

When it rained particularly hard one evening, the skylight began to leak again with new resolve, and he dragged the second crate that had accompanied him from his past life under the skylight, and threw the skylight bucket on top of it to catch the muddy rainwater. The bucket leaked, and the filthy water seeped down into the cracks of the box. Remus watched it without emotion.

November was too cold to be without electricity. Heat. Warm water. It was so much harder then he had imagined it would be to become an anonymous muggle. Magic was a crutch he'd never thought about losing. Money was something he'd never concerned himself with.

In December his two weak hands found a pair of muggle jeans and pulled them on to what had become a thin and starved frame. A t-shirt, two socks, a ripped sweater with a dark brown stain across its middle. He found that it had become an effort just to stand. In five months, he'd forgotten why he existed. _Is there an answer for that?_ Whispered a parched voice in his swimming head. He didn't answer it.

The bar was behind a large wooden door with black iron handles and massive blackened bolts, down a long, extremely narrow hallway of red brick which was tinged black as if fire might have at sometime caressed its baked stones. He found the owner sweeping a broom across the muddy floor.

The place was bathed in blue light from several blue glass sconces nailed into the brick and a curving florescent track light, which overlooked a curving zinc topped bar. There was a stage and a few tables. It was almost desolate. On one of the brick walls was painted a Starry Night-esque mural of a black night sky. Gazing at the foggy depiction he felt the nudge of a memory; flashes of James and Sirius drinking butterbeer on top of the astronomy tower hit him with an icy cold. God, so long ago.

"What's your name?" The middle aged, blue-haired manager asked as he finished stacking the chairs onto tabletops.

Quietly: "Remus."

"You can start tomorrow if you like, Remus. You have a last name?"

Remus looked into the dark mural on the cracked wall, "Loupseule." He said.


	2. In Fiery Dreams

_In the darkness of some February night, Remus opened his eyes to see Sirius sitting cross-legged on the end of his bed, back eyes watching him sleep, "What was in your dream?" Sirius said._

_In his memory, Remus sat up on the feathery Gryffindor bed and leaned back against one of the high bedposts. The curtains drawn around the bed made it hard for him to see Sirius' face clearly, but it was an intrigued one, youthful curiosity. And something else._

_"You were moaning." Sirius said._

_Remus closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wooden post. Words didn't form._

_Sirius lit a candle and put it between them so that the dark shadowy pictures, like fiery waves, danced across the dark curtains and the scarlet sheets, illuminating their somber faces._


	3. Easier to be Dead

SEQ CHAPTER h r 1In a rowdy department store he bought black pants and a dark blue button up shirt. On the way home, be bought a razor.

Standing shaven in the new clothes, he thought about combing his hair, and then remembered that he didn't have a comb. A little prod in his mind wondered how he looked, and he remembered he didn't own a mirror. It was ten-thirty. He went to the bar.

The long brick passageway into the place seemed longer this time, it was chilly in November already, and he didn't own a coat. There was a woman already turning on lights and opening up when he arrived into the blue-bathed room. She smiled when she saw him arrive and came around from behind the counter with blue-nail polished hand extended. She was young, he thought, to be working in place like this, not more than nineteen or twenty. He wondered if he was aging; she seemed almost adolescent to him.

Her hair was blond and streaked with a blue that matched the barstools and glass sconces. It framed her face and fell to her shoulders in a gentle way that reminded Remus how long it was since he'd been around anyone female.

Her eyes were a striking azure as she looked up at him and shook his hand with an un-callused palm. "I'm Iris," She said, "you must be Remus. The band needs help setting up."

Three or four men were carrying amplifiers onto the small stage at the back of the bar, and Remus lent a hand, feeling lost with the cords and plugs. He took three minutes trying to force the prongs of the extension cord plug into the outlet. Magic seemed so simple in a world of electricity and extension cords. He hurt for his wand, and for floo powder, and for the feeling of sickles and knuts in his palms instead of the muggle money he could barely count.

God it was hard, so hard, to be around people again. He worked the bar while Iris waited the few tables that scattered the room. When he was younger he'd listened to muggle music occasionally, not frequently, but often enough to know the song that was wandering through the room. Why was it, he wondered, that everything reminded him of Sirius?

"They walked along by the old canal  
A little confused, I remember well  
And stopped into a strange hotel with a neon burnin' bright.  
He felt the heat of the night hit him like a freight train  
Moving with a simple twist of fate."

In the dim light of the bar, every black haired head was James; each red haired woman, Lily. In every man he rested a glass in front of he saw Peter's eyes, and his own seemed to sting too often with the tears he brushed away.

"He woke up, the room was bare  
He didn't see them anywhere.  
He told himself he didn't care, pushed the window open wide,  
Felt an emptiness inside to which he just could not relate  
Brought on by a simple twist of fate."

People laughing made his stomach turn over. His mind felt so removed from laughter. It was something so foreign, so distant; he couldn't even remember how to make the sound. The lead corners of his lips wondered how to curve like that, how to smile. He couldn't remember the last time he'd smiled.

Yes, he could.

He had helped Lily to spread the sheets onto the queen-sized mattress. It was the last time he saw her alive. She grinned at the smell of fresh sheets and the feel of the sunlight as it drifted, dappled through the open windows and into the new house. Her stomach was large and beautiful, and she leaned on the windowsill as he finished tucking the sheets into the corners. He'd felt compelled to visit her that day. Such a beautiful day for someone to be alone. And someone should be with her constantly now he felt. She was getting so big. It wouldn't be long before the child came now, someone should help her with these chores. She was working too much on the new house, and James worried too. It was odd to sit there on the huge mattress with her leaning to look out the window into the spring air. Her red hair blew behind her and she turned around to smile at him with her clear green eyes. It was so hard to imagine how bad things could be happening in the world as they stood in that airy bedroom, sunlight illuminating the sweet air. It was hard to imagine that they had been hiding there, that it was a last resort. A last escape. Oh, Godric's Hollow.

_"People tell me it's a sin  
To know and feel too much within.  
I still believe he was my twin, but I lost the ring.  
He was born in spring, but I was born too late  
Blame it on a simple twist of fate_."

Days swept by. Nights lingered. Alone in his apartment he lay on the mattress and looked at the wooden box under the bucket of dirty water dripping from the skylight. He fell asleep in the dark cold apartment, and alone he wrestled with each thought of Sirius, blocked memories of the dark man away, willed them to disappear. He trained himself to serve the drinks without seeing the people there; the bodies so alive they made him feel dead. Sometimes that seemed as if it might be easier.

NOTE: lyrics by Bob Dylan, A Simple Twist of Fate.


	4. In Dark Eyes

_At the wedding Remus sat in the spare bedroom in his rented tuxedo, Sirius was straightening his bow tie in the mirror. It was spring and the air itself was glad. Outside the day was sunny, and a hired band was tuning up and throwing a few cords across the sunlit field. Sirius looked handsome in the suit, his shaggy black hair tied back with a piece of twine. There was something older about him as he stood fumbling with the tie, lines more set around his face, a finer jaw. They weren't school students anymore, something about that seemed strange. _

_Remus stood and covered the distance between them, reaching to push Sirius' clumsy hands out of the way and knot the bow tie with his steadier fingers._

_ "God. James getting married. It's wild, isn't it? I can't even breathe. Thank Merlin it's not me walking down the Goddamn aisle." Sirius said it with a grin across his handsome face. He was rocking up and down on the balls of his feet with the nervous energy that was so distinctly Sirius._

_ "Dance with me." He said suddenly, and Remus felt his hands being grabbed into Sirius' sweaty palms._

_ They whirled around the airy bedroom, hearing the band's soft music floating from the sunny lawn. Sirius pulled him closer and Remus looked up into the man's wild eyes; dark brown with a fierce circle of black outlining the shadowy irises. They stopped dancing._


	5. Betrayal

Christmas. Carols and snow and hot chocolate. Tinsel and customers buying drinks all around for men who were suddenly their best friends. And mistletoe. Remus drifted quietly in and out of the feeling of gingerbread and cinnamon, and bought a winter jacket from a salvation army down the street. It was not because he couldn't afford a nice coat, a down jacket in some trendy color from the brightly lit GAP two blocks away. Several months of steady pay, and a stomach that barely ever felt the need to be fed left him more money then he needed. No, it wasn't that at all.

He got lost in the dark walls of his apartment, in the deep gray and the watery light that fell into the room through the cracked skylight. He sat on the hard mattress and looked at the dirty crate underneath the skylight bucket, the black stains creeping out of the cracks between the pieces of wood, but he couldn't throw it away. In some small quadrant of his heart this was all he had left, these letters in this dark, wet box. He rolled over and found the bag of tobacco he had begun to carry in the last months. He rolled the cigarette slowly, and it calmed him.

He imagined he was wrapping bits of his past away in each roll, lighting them on fire, blowing them away in the dark smoke that fell from his mouth and nostrils. And at the same time he knew he was not blowing them away. They clung to his lungs and the taste lingered on his tongue and the roof of his mouth, and Sirius was there more than ever in every desperate puff.

At the bar Iris had kissed him underneath a piece of well-used mistletoe over the bar as they closed up. He'd pushed her away rather forcefully, without meaning to, and she'd looked hurt as she put on her coat and locked up the doors.

He wondered how long it would take to heal the wound that Sirius had left bleeding in his chest, it had been almost thirteen years. But moving on meant learning to breathe and walk and see again and he wasn't ready. Thirteen years, he thought, how could it have been so long? In his shadowy mind it was yesterday that he'd opened the door to find a breathless Minerva standing there, asking to come in. Minerva who had never been breathless before.

He'd been up all night waiting for news, waiting for someone to tell him where they were taking Harry, where Sirius was. And now here she was, and the words that came out of her mouth seemed to soak into him like water and then freeze suddenly with the chill of it. The ice expanded and cracked his body into pieces like so many shards of broken glass and he'd fallen to his knees with the blow. Sirius was being arrested for the murder of Peter Petegrew and the secret betrayal of James and Lily Potter. Each word was like an icy blade, and he shattered.


	6. I'll Watch Them Die

_Remus sat on the cold floor of the Hogsmeade cellar and watched Sirius smoke the cigarette. Sirius didn't smoke much, but the constant arguments with his family seemed to have beaten him back into the habit. He was leaning against a keg of butterbeer, and as he blew out the smoke he closed his eyes. _

_Howlers had been coming for weeks and other black enveloped letters that he would stuff into the pocket of his jeans and make off with to a bathroom or closet to read alone. _

_Remus didn't question him about these, he knew what the family of Black was, and he knew also what Sirius was. It was as a burnt tree with one small living branch that grew doggedly from the black wood. But the wind and weather and the black burnt wood threatened to stifle it, and Sirius smoked his cigarette. _

_Remus drank from a bottle of butterbeer and watched the candle wax melt into the cracks of the cement floor. Sirius put out the cigarette suddenly and leaned forward to stoke the flame with his index and middle finger. Remus watched the way the flame darted away from this dark man, afraid to burn him perhaps. He looked into Sirius' dark eyes and felt lost there, inside those bottomless depths of darkness and shadow where the flame seemed not to reflect. _

_"When I'm an auror," Sirius said, "I'll watch people like my parents die."_


	7. Instead

But instead he'd watched Peter die.  

He'd watched Peter die.  

Deep breathes.  In and out, in and out, keep the tears back; keep the feeling back, mix the pain with hot coffee and cheap tobacco.  James is dead.  Lily is dead.  Peter.  Flashes of life.  _Peter studying late in a dark library.  James landing on the muddy green grass of the pitch, hands high in the air as he waved the golden ball wildly above him.  Lily's green eyes.  Drinks on the astronomy tower, kitchen raids, midnights under the full moon.  James dazzling white body frolicking across the lake.  Peter playing beneath his paws.  Sirius running beside him, the long pink tongue lolling from his sharp white teeth.  Peter's eyes as he laid his hands on Lily's pregnant stomach.  Peter's smile as he told her what an uncle he would make.  James laughing.  Lily throwing the white sheet into the air, letting it settle slowly onto the mattress.  Making a guest bed no one would ever sleep in.  James laying on the living room floor sprawled out as he and Sirius finished a game of chess.  James' rook making a block.  Sirius' attack from behind.  Hidden bishop, secret treachery.  Sirius smoking a cigarette in the dark basement behind a solitary melting candle.  His dark eyes.  His dark eyes._

And Remus broke.  Like the cork in a bottle a champagne.  Like a stretched rubber band.  He was the string of an old violin, the mandrake pulled from the ground.  

He felt the water splash his face and soak his clothing as he kicked the box with all the strength he had left in his suddenly passionate body.  The wet wood cracked and the bucket flew to the air.  Molding paper slipped across the wood floor, black water seeped into the floorboards.  Squelched letters like rotten fruit burst from the decaying wood.  Ghostly water, reeking paper.  

His knees hit the floor first, deficient of the strength to stand.  Water soaked into his jeans and up his cold legs.  Blood trickled from where a stray nail from the box had entered his leg.  He collapsed to the fetid floorboards and lay among the soaking mass of pulpy ink and sodden paper.  He cried out and his tears flooded into the ocean of filthy water and naked letters, bright red blood.  The waste.  The squander, the could have beens, the I Love Yous, and Forever Yours.  He closed his eyes tightly like a child trying to shut away the world.  He screamed the cry of someone who has lost everything, a lone wolf on a starless, moonless night.  Blood and India ink.  _His dark eyes behind the red flame of a melting candle._

Somewhere in the world, a black dog slipped by a dark cloaked figure, unnoticed, and left an empty cell behind.  Albus Dumbledore tied an envelope to the leg of a ruffled brown owl, and a black-haired boy woke alone in the night.  Remus lay on the floor and thought he was dead.

_Well that's it guys.  The end.  __Terminus.  You've been great, you've been brilliant, you've been the best audience I've ever had.   Particular and ultimate thanks to RavenNat who helped me go the final mile.  Starr2, Sophocles, Insanely Freaky Dudett, ev, the counter, you guys are awesome.  Each of those e-mails from the fanfictionreviewbot was a diamond in my inbox.  Thanks evermore. Mwamwa. –Gud._


	8. Stay Broken

a/n: I couldn't stay away from this story.  Originally posted as a separate sequel, I've decided to continue Loupseule here instead.  With any luck, this should encompass Remus' year at Hogwarts and the escape of Sirius.  Enjoy, and PLEASE review. –G.

It was walking in the grass on Sunday mornings when the rest of the school was asleep.  It was the way the shadows bent down the dark halls as he walked them on so many sleepless nights.  It was sound of the wind through the heavy curtains and it was the sight of his own tears as they turned the worn slate floors a darker shade of blue that kept him broken.

Shards of glass begging to be set back in place with a single spell, one word, one phrase.  If only restoring the pieces of his broken life was as easily done.

His room was stone like all the castle, dark and full of mysterious shadows claiming to be James or Peter or Sirius, himself.  The bed was not unlike the one he remembered keeping as a student.  Dark sheets, dark curtains, heavy velvet; desolate dreams.  A trunk at the end of the four-poster cot held his few belongings beneath a deep mahogany lid.  And he wasted away the fall months quietly, silently, forlorn in the isolation of his mind.

Wizard's robes had a familiar and yet tainted feeling to them, like the old wand in his hand.  Objects from his old life like a blood stained splinter saved from an ancient wound.

There were transformations in the shed he remembered all too well, his own blood dark and black upon the shabby and forgotten walls.  The potions he took made everything so much sharper as they took away the pain, the sting of the memories and the change itself so much more intense when he was no longer hidden behind a wolf's mind.

He breathed in the dust and the smells of Hogwarts from behind a heavy oak desk and graded the papers he remembered writing as a student.  It was all so familiar and so changed.  Welcoming and unwelcome. Hogwarts.

Yes, it was the smells.  It was the smells that kept him broken.  They filled his nostrels and mind and choked him as they slid down his throat.  Worse than the feel of the cold stone under his feet as he swung his body slowly from the dark bed, worse than the laughter of students and the old portraits that remembered his name.  A thousand times worse were the smells.  They more than anything else brought it all back.  All racing into his broken mind like smoke from a pipe, spreading and swirling and clouding his gray eyes.

It was the food laid out on the wide wooden tables, the same recipes he assumed these elves had been using for years, the same mix of cinnamon and ginger and nutmeg.  The same flavors that he remembered from dark midnight kitchen raids and skipped classes.

It was the soap in the bathrooms as he stood on the dark navy tiles and turned the silver faucets.  It was the cleanliness of the hospital ward.  It was the blood of the shack.

It was a thousand scents exaggerated by a werewolf's nose, and as the moon approached they became stronger and deeper and so pungent his head ached with it.  It was unbareable and it was all there, all formiliar, all so clear.

And there were lessons with Harry.  Behind his desk he stood straight, feet flat at the sides of his chair, hands gripping the top wrung of the dark wood.  It started slowly, only a whirr in his stomach, adrenaline piercing up through his veins and down through his legs.  Cold.  Cold.  Cold and his knuckles were turning white as he gripped the chair.  He was aware of the beads of sweat coating his brow and back and the unders of his arms.  

He'd thought he would never see that face again, never look into those eyes.  God, it was James, God, it was Lily.  A tear came to his gray eye and he rubbed it away with a brush of his hand as he turned to face the class.

Harry was whispering something to the red haired boy sitting behind him and the way he leaned back on the chair was James.  The way the black robes hung from his small shoulders, the glasses perched on his nose.  James' nose.

Remus' breath came coolly and he closed his eyes for only a moment to harden himself for this.  Only a moment.  He was a stone now, rock, pillar.  He was stronger than this feeling of dread that pieced his veins and arteries and the soft bottoms of his flat feet.  

"Good morning."

REVIEW!! Xxo. – G.


	9. Dusk

Walking along the wet grass beside the pitch, Remus watched a lone sparrow take off from under one of the seat boxes and dash up to pass between his eyes and the sun for a fleeting moment before turning its dull brown feathers to the forest and leaving the pitch behind.  He neared one of the sections of raised bleechers as the sun cleared the forest and the school slept.  Looking up at the castle bathed in this light he could have been seventeen again.  Gryffindor tower could have held a slumbering Sirius, a sleeping James dreaming of Lily's green eyes.  

He pulled back the scarlet canvas and climbed the wooden stairs into the bleachers.  Gazing upward, the heavy canvas banners that covered the structure blew slightly in the wind and the light through them was tinted scarlet and gold.  His hand felt the rough railings and gazed at the places initals and hearts from forgotten years had been lovingly or hurridly scratched into the wood posts.  Somewhere there was a Moony scrawled.  And a Padfoot.  But he wasn't looking for them, and he climbed out into the box and gazed out over the pitch lit by morning sunlight.   

Sunday mornings and Thrusday afternoons flooded back.

_Sirius had been somewhat arrogant about his ability with a sprig of cloud-pine between his knees.  James too had had that quidditch player arrogance, and they made a handsome pair as they whipped through the airy skies in their scarlet and gold.  In his memory, he sat with Lily on the worn benches that had then been painted with a terrific badger mural.  Through rain and weather the paint had been reduced to a cracked and muddled image that could barely be made out through squinted eyes, yellow and blue specs of a forgotten year._

_It was cold then, and he and Lily ducked beneath the bleachers and out of the fall wind.  They were the only two in the Hufflepuff stands watching the Gryffindor practice, having chosen the position to get a better view of the goals.  Lily leaned back against the dark wood and he sunk down close to her for warmth.  They huddled together in the cold and laughed about the world through their eyes.  The grumpy professors, the Quidditch Cup, the Hufflepuff who was seeing a Slytherin.  _

_Above them the laughter of the boys they loved, the zoom, swish, whirr of the Clean Sweep Sevens.  It started to rain and they sat protected from the shower and spoke of more earnest things, of OWLS and NEWTS and the more and more somber articles of the Daily Prophet._

_If the players had gone in, neither noticed, and they talked into the dusk and Lily fell asleep against his cloaked chest so that his heart beat into her small round ears.  He ran a hand through the wavy strands of her hair and fell asleep in the dusky twilight with dreams of Sirius and James on cloud-pine branches and Lily's blood red hair._

Thanks again for reading.  Let me know what you think! Review! –G.


	10. Avada

_I apologize wholly for the lack of updates.  This chapter is finally finished, I've felt awful for not posting.  Unfortunately, my life has been going well lately, and it's hard to write about Remus' depressing life when you feel good.  I've won some art awards in New York and am no longer broke, and for the next few months I'll be busy with a Shakespeare production, which I've landed one of the leads for.  Thank you so much for reading!  Please review.  Hey, e-mail me, I don't hear from you enough!!  gudrosity@hotmail.com I'll be back soon!  Xxoo.  :) :) _

He undid the window's small lead latch and slid his body carefully through the round opening out onto the slate roof.  There he could sit with his legs braced up against the crumbling gutter work and roll a cigarette in silence.  He could think of Sirius as the clouds rolled in and the darkness folded away, the sun like a blaring red beacon rising above the forest.

He could lie back on the cold slate and spread his arms out onto the mossy tiles.  Another puff from the cigarette and he would throw it over the gutters to spiral down, down, down, to hit rooftops and windows before dying in the morning wet lawn.  _A noble death for that small smokey stub.  If I was a braver man, I might take that death.  _Remus said quietly to the sunrise.

The thought of Sirius out of Azkaban was one that made the smallest hairs on the back of his neck rise from his pale skin.  The thought of that dark man in an apartment somewhere, in a bar, in a crowded street.  Sitting on an empty rooftop under the rising sun.  

Part of him wanted to leave.  Wanted to search every hostel, every pub, anywhere that dark man could hide.  He imagined his wand at Sirius' throat.  He imagined the words, whispered them, ran them over his tongue and through his teeth to be swallowed whole again with the bitter taste of trepidation.

Avada Kedavra.

He closed his eyes and turned his head so that he could feel the wet moss of the rooftop on his smooth cheek and thought he could never say that spell.  Even if he found Sirius, those words would never come.

And here was Harry, with James face and Lily's eyes, and in the past few months Remus had begun to cling to the moments that Harry occupied that third row seat, seventh from the right in his dimly lit classroom.  He tried not to stare at the scar, at that black hair, at the way he slouched ever so slightly in his seat.  What a strange sensation, almost parental he felt suddenly.  Fatherly.  That fleeting thought,

_He could have been **my** Godchild_.

But of course, he wasn't.

Remus went to the library one night, late enough that the place was deserted save Pince, and she said nothing to him.  He had developed a sort of aura about him that kept the other professors and adults at Hogwarts at a distance.  Like mice move away from a sick brother.  As if his touch might harm, the very air he breathed might kill.  

_Yes_, he thought somewhat sarcastically, _tragedy is contagious_.

He took an old spell book without signing the pad at her desk, and Pince said nothing as he carried it away.

Upon his rooftop he opened the leather bound volume without noticing the text or title, and near the back there was pressed a small piece of brown paper.  His hands removed it shakily, unsure.  There had been only a fleeting feeling before that this page might still be pressed here.  The luck that no student had discovered it, no librarian tossed it away.  He unfolded the creased page and looked down at Sirius' scratchy handwriting.

It was only a scribble, a note left for his tired eyes late one night as he studied alone.  Something to greet him as he turned the last page and took the final notes for his midterm exam.  He looked at it with a frown though, and ran a thin finger over the curves of black ink.  In and out of each loop, each dot, each apostrophe.  And then slowly he took the cigarette from his lips and lit the corner of the brown paper.  Something had been growing in his mind.  A seed planted years before that in this cold castle was growing closer and closer to break the surface of his mind.

He watched the edge light and pass quickly, turning the brittle paper into dark ash.  And he watched it burn and curl as if in pain and finally let it drop from his fingers, down, down to be forgotten in the night air and the dark sky that blanketed him on his dark rooftop like an snowy owl into the night.


	11. Lily's interlude

Aren't you all so lucky I've had a rough break up with by boyfriend?  Or maybe you aren't, because now you'll have to sit around reading my fic and reviewing your fingers out! :P.  Write me. Xxoo. - G.

_Lily arrived that morning after Sirius was gone, and they drank the cold tea in the front room of the flat, sitting on the floor because there was no furnature yet.  She seemed tense and stiff, and she said she just needed to speak to someone.  She was beginning to show the child in her stomach, and where it had been flat before Remus could see the slight bulge in her blue T-shirt.  If he hadn't known, he might not have noticed.  _

_She ran her finger along the top of the brown mug as if it were a champage glass she thought might ring, and added another spoonful of sugar.  Her green eyes were gazing down as if she was seeing straight through the floorboards and into the apartment below, and there must have been something fastinating there because her eyes didn't move._

_He'd asked if she was alright, having never seen her add sugar to tea._

_She turned the edges of two set lips downward and ripped her eyes up to meet his so suddenly that he blinked._

_"I need to tell you something." She said._

_And then she did._

If you're looking for something to read while you wait for me tell you what the hell's going on with this fic, you should check out some of my other work here on fanfiction, some of which I actually feel is better than this, but no one actually has reviewed.  Thanks so much for reading!  Reviewreviewreview. –G.


	12. Apology

Oh did you really think I would write you that little two-paragraph snippet and then leave you hanging?  I love you far too much for that.  Here's the chapter. –G.

Snape was a different man that he had been at seventeen.  Still that slimy dark texture to his features, but under the exterior the core was changed.  Only a small shift of gears, but Remus sensed it in the way he moved and spoke and the movements of his brown darting eyes.  They were not so different, these two wraiths of men, these two solid shadows that were not exactly solid.

Severus dealt his anger in flashes of fury; livid sparks from his dark eyes.  Detentions and house points.  Remus played his own antagonism in silence over a cigarette or in his writings of the letters he never sent.  

But they were shadows of the same tree, and their parallel walks of Hogwarts became less and less so.  And on a late night of March as the moon waned of its silvery light, they crossed.

They stood in the owlery together in silence, an unexpected intersection of paths that neither had foreseen, and that if they had, they would have prevented.  Remus ran his rough palms over the stone and moved to sit up onto the ledge with the sky behind him.  Snape gazed at him in the stillness and uttered the words almost mutely.  

            "I'm sorry, Lupin."

Remus looked out over the black night.  The lonely hand of sky with a crescent moon resting lovingly in its palm.

            "It wasn't any fault of yours."

            Snape's face was impassive; set.  "I know what it's like.  To lose. To be lost."

            Remus turned to gaze at the bitter man in front of him, the dark haired fiend who the world so loved to despise.  He saw the small black eyes, the thin arrogant nose, the carefully pointed lips turned slightly in that permanent sneer.  His shoulders were slumped slightly; there was something less intense about him here with the wind from the spring skies whipping through the small tower room.  It teased the feathers and scraps of paper from the owlery floor and scattered them across the stone.  Remus leaned forward and slid off of the battlement.  And standing there with the moon at his right shoulder, and the stars blanketing him like a brilliant gem sparkled coat, he extended his hand forward, and shook and palm of Severus Snape.


	13. Lily's interlude

Dearest obsessed freak, I AM sixteen.  Hope you're still reading the fic. Sorry for the confusion.  I've been hearing a lot about people being confused lately.  I realize I'm writing this in a round about style.  I hope things will start to make sense soon.  I realize this chapter won't help.  It's a continuation of the conversation in _Lily_.  Imsorryimsorryimsorry.  Mail me with questions if you have them. Or, you know, REVIEW.  Xxoo. –G.

"_What?"  He was standing, the tea leaking across the carpet from where it had splashed from his broken teacup._

_            Lily bent down and began to mop up the hot liquid with the edge of her scarf, "Remus, I told you, I'm not sure."_

_"Then why did you say it?"  His face was red and flushed and he was trembling slightly as he stood on the white tea stained rug.  He kneeled at the ground beside her and grasped her shoulders.  "Lily, how long have you known?"_


	14. Bliss

_Lunaris, I log in to fanfiction in hopes of seeing your lovely reviews. Xo._

_This is awakening_. Remus thought as he opened his eyes.  _This is the morning_.  _This is my life_.  _Not Sirius, and I'm alive_.  He rolled over on the soft sheets and felt the cotton brush by each hair on his legs and each inch of smooth skin.  He looked at the small triangle of light that was formed at his pillow by the light spilling in through the latch of the window.  He turned onto his back at looked up at the stone ceiling, the beam that ran across at an angle, the cobweb missed by the elf that cleaned this room, the ray of sunlight illuminating the specs of fuzzy dust as they floated through the bright air.  He drew in a breath and he was twenty-one again.  

Sirius' voice that morning.  Lips pressed against his ear.

_"Please don't move.  Just stay this way for a moment Remus." _

It was their apartment in the city.  The one they had bought together with the money they had saved so long.  Their own apartment, their own dream.  No dark Hogwarts curtains hiding their four-poster bed away.  No dark stone rooms, no eleven o'clock curfews.

_His sweet voice again.  "Just a moment, just a second. While the light hits you face that way, and the air tastes this sweet, and the world feels so right.  Because I know that as soon as you move I'll have to remember that the world isn't perfect.  The world isn't this moment, the world isn't your eyes.  And I'm not ready for that.  Please stay just a moment in my arms, Remus."_

Remus hadn't moved, he'd felt the calm of that moment as Sirius felt it, the happiness of that one second, all the happiness in the world.  And even if Sirius had said nothing, he knew he would not have moved for all the world.  And Sirius' smooth voice filled his ears and crept benieth his skin to stay forever in that flash of flawless perfection.  

_"Just a moment, just a second." He said, "I have a bad feeling Rem, and I'm afraid we might never lie here again this way.  And if I could never lie here beside you again, then I would want to burn this moment into my mind and my heart and every inch of myself so that maybe it won't blow away like so many other perfect moments, and maybe the mark it leaves bleeding in my heart might stay burnt like a burgundy tattoo and never leave me.  I love you Remus. I love you so much.  Just a moment, Remus, just a second."_

Quick!°REVIEW°!! pleasepleasepleaseplease. Xxo. –G.


	15. Lily's interlude

"LILY! How long have you known?"

"Known?  I'm right then?"

"No!  I-"  He turned on his heals, hands brushing angrily through his hair, "For God's sake, Lil, how the fuck should I know any better than you? How long have you suspected?"

"Not long."  She was looking at him with those deep green orbs, her small lips frowning, a piece of blood red hair falling from the messy ponytail.

_"It isn't Sirius." He said._

_"But you don't **know**."  Her words pierced his stomach, pierced his spine. _

_"It's Sirius for fuck's sake.  I know."_

_"Well it's someone, Remus.  Voldemort isn't reading tealeaves.  And if it's one of us, then it's Sirius."_

_"**How can you tell me that**?"_

_"Do you remember the look on his face when we'd practice death curses in school?  That snear? Goddamn, Remus, don't stand here and tell me I'm wrong."_

"I'd trust Sirius with my life, Lily."

There was a pause.

_"**I want you to be the secret keeper**."  Her voice was steady and firm.  She had hardened herself for this, skipped breakfast, skipped dinner the night before.  Slept little, spoken less.  Her solid stare unnerved him.  She passed a hand to rest upon her stomach.  "It's a matter of months, Remus.  I'm not asking this for me. I don't trust that man."_

_He crossed the room to lay his hands on her shoulders-_


End file.
